Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Reggie Moore

Today was the funeral for Elder Reggie Moore. David Collier, Paul Jackson, and John Pruitt gave brief messages and Sam Wilson preached the concluding message of the service. 

I did the the following graveside service.

As it has pleased our Sovereign God,
who hath determined the times before appointed,
and the bounds of our brothers habitation;
We commit Elder Reggie Moore’s earthly tabernacle to the earth.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: 
but the soul has returned to the God who gave it –
our brother, now absent from this body,
is now present with the Lord Christ who redeemed Him with His blood.

Here we immerse the body,
which will wait for the glorious appearing of the great God and Saviour Jesus Christ;
Who died for sins, was also buried
But the grave could not hold Him.
Conquering death, rising from the dead for our justification,
   
He gives us a living hope in a living Saviour.
Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

Amen.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Every Chapter Better

CS Lewis - The Last Battle
“And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story which no one on earth has ever read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before”

Sunday, December 15, 2013

An Extraordinary Saviour

An excerpt from the sermon at a baptismal service 12/15/13.

We get bogged down in the daily workings of life that we miss the wonderfully obvious, that this world, even in its broken state, is a pretty wild place. We are on a rock that is spinning 1,000 miles an hour hurling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour. That sun that we journey around every year, gives us heat and gives us light, in which trees turn into oxygen, in which we breathe out laughter at a nine month old learning experimentally about gravity. We see these things, but don’t see them.

This world and this life is wonderfully extraordinary and is all around us and we miss it staring at our phones, or becoming so preoccupied with things that don’t matter. Our problem is much deeper than not paying attention, though that is a big problem. Our problem goes all the way down into the core. Some of you listened to me preach this morning and heard a message of the gospel, and it was established in your heart. Some of you were daydreaming and haven’t the foggiest idea what I was preaching. Some of you listened and heard me, but did not hear what I was saying, you did not perceive the Words, you heard the concept, but did not perceive. Hearts have grown dull, and you have ears they can barely hear, and have closed your eyes; lest you should see with your eyes and hear with your ears and understand with your heart and turn from your sin unto the Saviour and be healed.

We are about to witness a baptism, and I wonder what you will see? When John Baptized, some saw a religious symbol, and nothing more. Some saw a wild man dunking people under the water, and nothing more. Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive. But those who were truly saved and truly waiting for the coming of Messiah saw something more.

Baptism tells the story of such a miracle that goes unnoticed and forgotten, even by those people who have experienced it. Baptism paints a picture for those with eyes to see the most beautiful tale of love, heroism, and devotion the world will ever know. Baptism tells the story of death and sacrifice. Justice and mercy. Burial and repentance. Resurrection and newness of life. Baptism does not save, baptism speaks.

The miracle of regeneration, where a human spirit, that cannot live, is given life to really live for the first time is put on full display. The miracle of dead bodies coming out of their tombs and walking about. The miracle of new creations, new creatures having been born again and seen the kingdom of God. The story of a Man, who called a dead man from his grave, and that man answered and obeyed and hopped out of the tomb. The story of this Man who entered into the world, but was bigger than the world itself, and died at the hands of wicked men (though they did not take His life from Him) and He laid down His life voluntarily as a sacrifice to present sinners blameless before God. Whose dead body was made alive again and walked out of the tomb securing the death of death by the death of Christ.

You have heard this story, but have you really heard it? Have you really believed it? Has it been confirmed in your soul that Jesus died and rose again? Will you see a woman getting wet in the front of a church, or will you see a picture of Jesus dying and rising out of the tomb? Will you see a women getting wet, or will you see a woman who was made alive by grace? Who God has quickened from the dead, from death to life to the spiritually dead. A picture of the new birth, and walking in newness of life.


What will you see?
Will you see the gospel?
Will you see the working of Grace?
Will you believe what we will show you?

This is the gospel of grace. All have sinned and come short of the perfect standard that God has demanded from His creation. From birth, our hearts are bent and broken towards sinfulness. Even our best efforts are tainted by sin. We have fallen from God and are guilty having broken His commandments. We are a sinful people estranged from a Holy God and we have no way to fix what is broken. We can’t do better, we can’t repair the past. We are guilty before God and deserving to be punished and to go where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

But listen to me, really listen because I want to tell you how awesome God is. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, came into this Earth that He might seek and save those lost souls to whom the Father had given Him. He didn’t look for good people because there were not any good people. All were ruined and thrust into sin. But Jesus, born of a virgin, the Word made flesh, lived a life of perfection, obedient to every law of God. Jesus did what Adam could not do, He was born perfect and stayed that way. Never the slightest hint of sin from the Lord, a perfect man who lived for the purpose that when the fullness of time had arrived, He would offer Himself to God, a sacrifice for sins.

When the hour had come, Jesus was taken to Golgotha and nailed to a cross. The father had taken the sins of the elect and laid them on the sinless Saviour. The Son bore the wrath and the punishment and paid the penalty completely for the sins that we committed. When God’s wrath was satisfied, Jesus gave up the ghost.

After three days and three nights, Jesus rose from the dead, alive. Not a spirit, not a ghost, but bodily arose and walked about walking in newness of life. This is the good news, for if you repent of your sins, if you trust in what Jesus did, and trust that this testimony is true and cry out to God to save you knowing He is the only true and sufficient perfect Saviour, then you will have life and life eternal. By God’s grace, die to self, and are born again, raised to walk in newness of life, to follow your Lord and your Saviour, all the days of your life.

This is an extraordinary world. Only because we have an extraordinarily awesome Saviour.


Friday, December 13, 2013

The Calvinist by John Piper

I tweeted out a link to this poem a few days back, and the folks at Desiring God have updated their video with subtitles.

Both a beautiful poem and video.


With a special "two for the price of one" deal here at the blog, I'm going through in, absolutely free, this quote from Spurgeon. Also, if you object to the term Calvinism, then coin a single word to describe the doctrines of Grace and God's sovereignty and get the rest of the world to catch on and replace it. Let me know when you do (or would you have to let me know?) but until then, we live in a world with words and words have meanings. Right now, the term Calvinist has a meaning and I don't have to define it because you know what it means too.
 "I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor."

DP Newell

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Dying of Dignity

"It is easy enough among Dissenters to find regulations as rigid as could be invented by any bench of bishops; you may not vary the length of the hymn or the order of the service by a hair’s breadth, or you will sin against your own reputation and the feelings of the conservative portion of the congregation. There are few of such places now, but quite enough. and, where the evil rules, the good folks are as tenacious of their established nonsense as ever the Church of England can be of her printed prayers and rubrics; and the preacher must submit to all the regular fudge as if it were Scripture itself, or be pronounced eccentric and wanting in decorum. A man that is a man will yield for peace sake as far as his soul is unhampered, but beyond that he will ask, “Who makes these regulations, and to what end are they made?” Finding them. to be worthless and injurious, he will put his foot through them, and there will be an end of the rubbish. Some congregations are dying of dignity, and must be aroused by real life. People said that Mr. Hill rode on the back of order and decorum, and therefore he called his two horses by those names, so that if he could not ride on the back of them he might make the saying nearly true by being dragged behind them. Order and decorum, in some of our churches, have manifested themselves to be deadly sins; dead and burying the dead. Some congregations are so very orderly that they are like a vault in which the corpses lie, each one in due place, and none dares to move or lift a voice loud enough to be called a chirp. This will not do. Bring the trumpet! Sound a blast and wake the sleepers! Eccentric! Yes, eccentricity, if you like to call life by that name. Heaven knows it is sadly wanted."


C.H. Spurgeon from Eccentric Preachers




DPN